Emily Horne, aka Amileannya Carmichael aka Emily J Lecount, is being described in England as a "predatory female" who's now been charged with bigamy for "tricking" five men into marriage.

Horne, 30, who studied physics but made her living, allegedly, as a "glamour model' and escort, is the villainess of the day across the pond. Because Horne has married five times - without first obtaining divorces. She married her high school boyfriend - legally - at 18, but although the two soon drifted apart, the marriage was never legally dissolved, and so her next marriage, three years later, wasn't legal. When she married a third time in 2000, the authorities took note and issued a caution, but this didn't stop her from a third illegal marriage, under a different name, two years later. When she allegedly attempted to leave her fourth husband for a friend of his, he turned on her and ratted her out to the cops. Horne served six months. The judge at the time said, "You are an attractive young woman and you might be described as a very predatory female."

So what, then, would prompt her to marry a fifth man in 2007? And to then confess the reality of her situation mere hour after the wedding, with press clippings to prove it? A "predatory female?" Try, "deeply disturbed." She lied and manipulated and obviously hurt people deeply - apparently she claimed she'd lost a sister and given up a baby, and told husband #5 that she had "womb cancer" - but what was the pathology at work that led this woman to risk certain capture in order to "marry" yet again? She doesn't seem to have used the relationships for material grifting gain - so to dismiss her as some kind of black widow seems an oversimplification, and far less troubling than the reality.

The Daily Mail, of course, asks what the guys saw in her, managing to imply both that she had insufficient beauty to entrap, and that the guys were morons. Huh? They found her attractive, charming, and intelligent, by all accounts. But what was behind her compulsion for some kind of security?

In some ways, she's reminiscent of the "Hipster Grifter," down to the cancer claims - maybe a sociopath, sure, but a lot more tragic than gleeful media accounts like to acknowledge. Beyond the fact that "predatory female" speaks of the worst kind of retrograde stereotyping - a wicked siren, using poor men for her own ends - but coverage has taken the same reflexively gleeful tone, even when the merest glance at the facts tells a different - and more interesting - story. (One imagines that, were she not deemed "attractive," she'd be regarded as some kind of sorceress instead - or, alternatively, pathetic.) Part of this, I think, is a delight at seeing these men humiliated - for some reason "hapless dupe beguiled by Eve" seems to strike some as the height of comedy, allowing for mockery of several different gender stereotypes at once; would a tale of a similar cad provoke glee - or mock-sympathetic hand-wringing for the wronged victims? As it is, people are watching Emily Horne's case with interest, and after her guilty plea this week, doubtless hoping for a long stint in jail that will teacher her a lesson or something - because, obviously, that's gonna do the trick.